"I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Matthew 3:11

Last week I gave you an Advent vocabulary word; it was “apocalyptic.” Does anyone remember what it means? Its definition is: “to uncover, or reveal,” in the sense of all the curtains being pulled back from a stage, so you can see all the behind-the-scenes workings. And sometimes that behind-the-scenes work also reveals multiple realities going on at the same time. This is especially true in this season of Advent, when apocalyptic is one of the themes running through Advent.

In the reading from Isaiah we get the image of what’s called the Peaceable Kingdom, very similar to what we heard in the Old Testament last week. It paints a picture of God’s desire, God purpose for the world – which includes God judging on behalf of the poor, God exercising justice and equity on behalf of the down-trodden, the excluded, the oppressed. God’s hope for the world also encompasses those who are enemies to one another, offering a vision for peaceable relations between them and living side by side with balance, harmony, and trust. This vision appears like a banner in the upper part of our stage, or like a film that is playing out in the top part of the screen, in the realm of eternity. We are not there yet, but that’s the plan, and the goal that God has for us.

And down below, still with the curtains drawn all the way back, we see in time, and space, and history John the Baptist walking onto the stage of human affairs – right on cue, according to God’s timing. And what does John do, this cousin of Jesus and son of Elizabeth, Mary’s kinswoman? John calls the people to repentence and preparation for the Lord’s coming.

Now let’s be honest: John is pretty dramatic. His clothing and his diet are decidedly off-the-grid. He doesn’t go to the Jerusalem, to the city to do his work, but stays twenty-plus miles to the east, at the Jordan River, an unpopulated area. He’s announcing the coming of the Messiah, and urging people to prepare themselves by turning away from habits of mind and life that do not align with what they know to be God’s best intentions for them (aka their sinful ways). And with that repentence comes a ritual, a mark of cleansing, of a new start in order to be ready for the Messiah’s arrival: baptism. While the people seem to flock to him, John does not welcome all comers; he’s down-right hostile to people from two different sects of Judaism: the Saducees, who were aligned with the Jewish royal family and the institutional structure of the Temple – what you might call the Establishment; and the Pharisees, who sought to live good and religiously upright lives but often went overboard in their scrupulosity and lost their sense of humanity, mercy, and human frailty. So when people who were Saducees and Phariess come out to the river to see what is going on, to investigate the commotion, John pulls no punches: “You brood of vipers” he calls them - a mess of slithering snakes. Yikes! That would want me turn and run away.

And yet, the people come. They hear in John’s message of preparation and getting their lives in order for God’s Anointed One, a message of hope. We’ve kind of forgotten that. Repentance is not about condemnation; repentance is about hope – about turning one’s life around, with God’s help, making room for hope and healing and joy. And baptism is a sign of that hope and new life.

This morning we will baptize Aaron Matthew Saitta. And while as a four-month old Aaron really has no capacity to repent and to nothing to repent of (other than keeping his parents up at night), the world he has been born into will need him to be ready to embrace and welcome the Messiah, the Christ, into his life.

Now in our mind’s eye we’ve still got that banner with God’s Peaceable Kingdom, as described by Isaiah, up over the human stage, but now the scene below has changed – as it does with every passing age – and we see ourselves facing new challenges, new difficulties, new dangers and opportunities for sin against God and our fellow human beings. In fact, in the last month we’ve seen that the slow, somewhat steady, but far-from-complete progress we have made in this country in civil rights and human rights and extending basic human decency to all people has not progressed as much as we had hoped and we had told ourselves. If anything, the unveiling of the last weeks and months has shown us that there has been a pendulum swing, a system backlash that has been driven (at bottom) by fear and a sense of scarcity.Fear can be very powerful, but we Christians know that at the end of this Advent season we will hear the Angel Gabriel say to Mary: Fear not! And the heavenly host will say to the shepherds in the field: Fear not! Angels in Scripture almost always tell us not to be afraid. Because if we let ourselves give in to fear, we will not be able to hear and receive God’s message, we will not be able to respond to Jesus’ call to follow him, we will not have the courage and strength to act as Christ’s hands and feet in the world.

Our baptism calls us away from that fear. It sets before us a different reality, and a different picture of what is of worth, value, and importance – even if the world around us cannot see or will not acknowledge it. The reality our baptism ushers us into is the truth that God’s love for us is boundless; it knows no scarcity. God’s love is not dependent on how we look, how much we make, where we come from, who we love, or how often we have failed. God’s love is a gift, given to us supremely in the birth and life and death and resurrection of Jesus. And so if we choose to accept that gift, then we have the responsibility to follow Jesus, to live in his way, to be his agents in the world, offering hope and good news – especially in the places that seem most dark, most fraught, most conflicted, without regard for truth or for the infinite worth and dignity of all human folk.

In baptism we receive the Father’s love; we are joined to Christ; we are signed and sealed by the Holy Spirit. And all of this is not so that we can go to heaven when we die, but it is the launching pad for a life of faithful relationship with God and one another; a life of humble yet daring service in Jesus’ Name and on his behalf. And in some ways we could have no better model than John the Baptist: he spoke God’s truth with boldness and courage when it was called for, and did so publicly when necessary. Yet he also knew that he was not the Messiah, he was not God, this life and ministry was not his own project, but the work of the Lord who had sent him. As John said when asked, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.” John’s humility before God and his neighbors, combined with his holy boldness, were a powerful force which he harnessed for God’s purposes.

We, too, can act with humility and boldness as we follow Jesus, as we live out our baptism, as we speak and act and pray and love God’s truth and goodness and peace into this world, fully confident that all those things await us in the next.

So in this time of our national life, and in this Advent season, let us remember:God is good; all the time. All the time; God is good.God is good; all the time. All the time; God is good.God is good; all the time. All the time; God is good. Amen.

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, "As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down." Luke 21:5-6

Today we begin our experiment with extending Advent, which is why you see purple altar hangings and vestments. As I’ve said in a variety of settings, it’s not about rushing Christmas, it’s about having time to focus on all the themes of this very important season of expectation for the Advent (or “coming”) of Christ, the Messiah. His first Advent at his birth in Bethlehem, certainly, but equally important, his Second Advent when he returns to reign over his God’s creation in glory.

And the readings assigned for the day couldn’t be clearer – the vision of God’s purpose and goal for all he has created (in Isaiah), and the reality check of Luke’s Gospel that even things that seem permanent, rock-solid will eventually pass away if they do not serve God’s purpose.

In the passage from Luke, Jesus and the disciples are in the Temple in Jerusalem. It is the week following the Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Jesus has been teaching and ministering in the Temple by day, and withdrawing to the Mount of Olives outside the city at night. The Temple was a tremendously impressive building, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and its importance for Jews was like the Capitol Building, the Statue of Liberty, and the Washington National Cathedral all roll into one. So for Jesus to respond to the disciples’ admiration of it by telling them that it all would be thrown down, not one stone left upon another, was shocking and disorienting.

And then the disciples wanted a schedule and signs of the impending destruction; maybe they could arrange to be out of town that day.

Jesus’ answer wasn’t too satisfactory; in fact, he probably even ratcheted up the anxiety - "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom,” and he went on to talk about personal exposure to censure and danger. Thanks a lot, Jesus. All this sort of thing was to happen before there would be resolution, before God’s goal would be fully realized. And in the meantime, his followers should know that no matter what, no matter how bad things got, God would be with them. The process of bringing God’s purpose for the earth and its people to fruition, what we might call the Reign of God, would see dismantling and destruction before there would be a new wholeness and completion.

Why? I believe it is because our institutions, and social structures, and ways of organizing life – however good and venerable – if they are not receptive to the on-going presence and renewal and reconstruction of the Holy Spirit – will eventually become obstacles to God’s love and justice, and will be set aside, dismantled.Woah, that’s pretty harsh!

And we have just lived through months of harsh campaign rhetoric, and exhausting, draining emotions. As I said in my note to the parish on Thursday, for some the outcome of the election was a shock, and for others it was welcome news; but either way I don’t think we have seen an American election quite like this in living memory. And the reactions to the election have been just as stark, with numerous incidents of people being targeted with ugly threats and harassment by strangers who don’t like the way they look, speak, or love. Some of these who have been targeted are people I know and value and care about. Maybe you know someone who has been harassed also. That is never OK. And the surges of protests in a number of cities are also stark, although maybe not surprising, given that during the campaign, voters were hearing that if the election didn’t go certain way it meant the system was rigged. The difference between the popular vote and the Electoral College vote probably adds another layer. No matter the result, there were bound to be demonstrations on one side or the other. But it is all disturbing and disorienting as we wonder what it all means for our country and our democracy – a stark place to be.

In contrast, we have the reading from Isaiah that lays out the vision for God’s joyful, abundant, and peace-filled reign when earth and heaven come together, one united sphere of God’s presence. And in Isaiah’s language that’s all about longevity, community, family generations, fruitfulness, and a deep-seated peace between those who, by nature, would be considered enemies and dangerous to one another: the wolf and the lamb, the lion and the ox. In God’s reign these are not predators and preyed-upon, but fellow creatures sharing in God’s blessedness and peace. That is what it looks like when God is fully ordering and inhabiting creation, the goal towards which history is moving.

Well, we could certainly use some of that peace here and now. But we don’t get there without some dismantling of the things that don’t serve God, and without God’s judging the affairs and conditions of humankind – more about that next week. There will always be things that are dismantled all around us, changed, up-ended. And then there are the things that we should be dis-mantling, taking apart, in our own hearts, minds, and habits – and for that we need the help of the Holy Spirit.

But then there are the habits and practices that we need to cultivate and build if we are to work and prepare for Christ’s Second Advent, the goal to which all human and created history is moving – that vision of the Peaceable Kingdom - as the Beloved Community - as Martin Luther King called it.as it is sometimes called. One of those habits is the Passing of the Peace. It’s role in our liturgy is to express and extend the Peace of Christ that is in us and in our community. It is not just a “Good morning, good to see you” or Part 1 of coffee hour. We gather for worship, coming from all our diverse lives and experiences. We hear from God in the Scripture readings. Maybe what we hear is challenging, maybe it is consoling or strengthening, maybe the Scriptures show us something we need to work on or ask forgiveness for.

Then in the Prayers of the People we offer our intentions for a wide variety of others. Maybe there is someone for whom you have a hard time praying, or whose memory causes you pain or grief, as well as those for whom you pray most easily and fervently. After the prayers we make our confession to God, aloud together, offering up all that gets in the way of being in union with God and one another and our neighbors, both broadly and specifically s Once we have received absolution, heard God’s gracious pardon and reassurance pronounced, then we share the Peace with one another. Now we are in a fit state to come to the altar, as a community, not just as individuals, as the Body of Christ.

We take the peace that God has given us through Scripture, prayer and confession and we extend it to one another. That’s why we say “Peace be with you” or “The Peace of the Lord” and shake hands. It’s not a perfunctory greeting. It’s a stitching together of God’s People, an acknowledgement that we are all in this faith together, we are all in God’s world together, we depend on one another, and are enriched by one another.

Of course sometimes the hardest thing to do may be to pass the Peace with someone with whom you have been at odds, to whom you have said harsh things, or who has hurt you. If that has been true for you, I am not asking you to act as though nothing happened, as if you never argued or hurt each other. But I am asking you to recognize that God’s forgiveness and love are bigger than both of you put together. And by extending a hand and a voice to offer Peace to one another, an opening for reconciliation may take place. No matter what, you are both held and loved by God.

And then this practice of Peace is a gift for you to take out into the world, a world which needs it so badly. By learning how to make Peace here before the altar, maybe we can learn to make and share God’s Peace with our neighbors, our co-workers, the people we hang out with online, the people we come across in our everyday lives.

The world and our country need God’s Peace – we need to look for it, offer it, make it, hold it; even as we wait with eager longing for the fullness of Peace when Christ comes in all his glory to bring to fulfillment his Peaceable Kingdom, the Beloved Community.

Let us pray.Almighty God, kindle, we pray, in every heart the true love of justice and peace, and guide with your wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of the earth, that in tranquility your dominion may increase until the earth is filled with the knowledge of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. ~ BCP

Then Jesus said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well." Luke 17:19Sometimes geography can be really important, and this morning’s Gospel is one of those times. The passage begins: On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. The region between Samaria and Galilee – the two anciently related groups of people who despised each other – that in-between place that was neither/nor. Jesus was headed to Jerusalem in his final journey to the Cross, and where does he go? To the borderlands, a place of ambiguity and hostility, if not down-right danger. And while he and the disciples were traveling through this no-man’s land, they met a group of lepers, people whose skin disease caused such fear of contagion that they were quarantined outside of town, shunned, cut off from any community outside their own company. They knew the rules, these lepers; they kept their distance from Jesus, but they called out for his assistance and mercy. Maybe this was the One who could heal them, could end their suffering and their isolation.

Now before we get too comfortable with this story, thinking that this kind of banishment was an ancient, unenlightened practice, think again. Not only did leper colonies continue all over the world through the middle of the twentieth century, but thirty years ago the US was in the middle of the AIDS crisis, when children with AIDS were barred from school, and some medical professionals refused to treat AIDS patients – despite the fact that the virus is not easily communicable – because of their “life-style choices” as gay men or intravenous drug users. Fear and judgement was in the air for years. One of my personal heroes is my dentist who, long before I ever came to All Saints’, agreed to treat a young woman of this parish when no one else would give her the dental care she needed because she had AIDS. She eventually died of the disease. The ostracism she and so many others lived through and died with were a kind of modern borderlands, an exile from community, a place of neither/nor.

So Jesus encountered these people, these ten lepers. They called out to him for mercy and healing, and he healed them, telling them to go and show themselves to the priest – the local Temple official – who was the person who could officially declare them clean and restore them to community life; kind of an ancient Jewish doctor’s note to be able to go back to work. And they all went off to do just as Jesus said, and in the going were made clean. But one came back – the one who was living under the double whammy of being a leper and a hated Samaritan among Jews. The import and the irony here should not be lost: the one who was the greatest outcast was the one who returned to give thanks, to fall on his face at Jesus’ feet, to give praise to God for what Jesus had done.

Why didn’t the other nine come back and offer thanks? We don’t know. Perhaps they were so relieved at their return of health that they forgot. Perhaps they were eager to get back to their families and former lives. Perhaps they wanted to put as much distance between themselves and those borderlands as quickly as possible. But maybe part of it was their recognition of the power of God in and through Jesus. With power can come danger, upset, requirement to change; maybe it was just easier to slide away.

But the Samaritan came back; he returned to give thanks and praise to God. And Jesus commended his faith – his recognition and trust in the power and goodness of God, not just to be physically made well, and to be restored to his community, but also to be saved – to live in the fullness of God’s purpose and blessing for him, now and in the age to come. When Jesus tells him to “get up” it’s a word related to resurrection: rise, stand, made new and whole, enter into God’s reality. And all because the man returned to give thanks, to express his gratitude.

We are entering what is traditionally a season of gratitude, both in our culture and in the Church. We are surrounded by images of harvest and abundance. Thanksgiving is a little over six weeks away. We know we are supposed to be counting our blessings – in this season at the very least, if we don’t do it every day. And it’s the season for a very important aspect of stewardship, when we gather our financial resources for the coming year, out of our gratitude and thanks for all that God has done for us – not unlike the squirrels in my back yard gathering hickory nuts and acorns for the coming of winter – glad for the abundance of the trees that support and shelter them.

When we think about gratitude, we can consider it in at least two ways: the personal and the corporate/community. I hope and pray that we all have things in our personal lives to be grateful for – ways that God has sustained, healed, restored you and your loved ones. Those images of the borderlands in the Gospel, after all, aren’t just about physical geography; they are also about our own lives and experiences. After all, how many of us have spent time (sometimes a lifetime) in those borderlands where we are living in the pain of being unwanted, unwelcomed, at enmity with others or with ourselves? Those are precisely the places where Jesus shows up, accompanies us, hears us, heals us, loves us. And I hope and pray that we can all make living in gratitude a daily habit.

We can also be grateful for our parish community – not just in what it does for us, or what we get out of it, but grateful for the increasing role we are playing with our neighbors and our civic community. So often when I am out and about people say tell me how much they value All Saints’ and the open-hearted and generous ways we try to embrace the community – whether it be through AA and other recovery meetings, partnering with our Christian Community friends, our food pantry, our dinners for Vets, our support of Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts; hospitality of place, of food, of prayer. That’s who other people know us to be; - it’s our vocation as a community following Jesus. But it means it’s our vocation, together, not just mine as priest doing it on your behalf, or the buildings as the assets we have to share. We all together have been given the gift and vocation to be a healing, loving, strengthening, generous presence in our community, and the Holy Spirit continues to nudge, cajole, inspire, and push us in the ways God wants us to go. We are very much a work in progress.

And we are grateful for all of this, grateful that God has called us into partnership with him in this place and time. So as we begin to think and pray about what financial resources we will commit to God’s work in and through All Saints’ for 2017 - as well as our commitment of time, and talent, and prayerful presence - we should remember that the way we express our gratitude affects not just ourselves alone, but our neighbors and community members. Let us act with the generosity of Jesus, remembering that:God is good/All the time. All the time/God is good. Amen.

Jesus said: There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. Luke 16:19-21

What do you do when someone comes across your path who asks you for money – someone who is begging on the street, or at the train station or the subway, or some other place you go to? And how does it make you feel when you are approached in this way? These are questions we were discussing in our Bible study group this past week. And there were a variety of answers: one person has invited a street person into a nearby coffee shop and paid for their meal; someone else carries a zip-lock bag with a warm hat or scarf, a bar of soap, and several granola bars to distribute as the need arises; and others of us were not sure we have ever been in a place where we have been pan-handled for money.

It also got us into a discussion of why there are people living on the street or very close to that in the first place – and we came up with lots of reasons, often intertwined and causing a cascading fall into destitution, or pretty close to it. Some of those reasons can be illness or injury, family troubles, mental illness, lack of education, lack of job opportunity, domestic violence, a business failure – just for starters; and then substance abuse and addiction on top of that creates a whole new level of difficulty. Add to all that the very small number of inpatient recovery programs and supervised shelters, and the wait for available beds and funds, even for people who want to get help….and the problem is overwhelming. And that can leave even people of good will and intentions feeling helpless and fearful. When we are feeling like that, it can be easier to turn away, easier not to see. I’m sure we’ve all been in that place.

And then this morning we hear the story that Jesus was telling to the Pharisees when a group of them mocked Jesus for his teaching about not being able to serve both God and wealth, which we heard last week. The Pharisees, after all, were coming from the mind-set that the land (and the wealth that came from it) was a blessing from God and a sign that they were faithful to Torah – the Jewish law for living, the Hebrew Scriptures. So for them, wealth was conflated with serving God, and if there were poor people in the world – certainly in ancient Palestine: Judea and Galilee – it was a sign that those folks weren’t right with God, that their condition in life was their own fault.

So Jesus tells this parable about a man named Lazarus (not to be confused with Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary of Bethany, whom Jesus raised from the dead) who was poverty-stricken, and sick, and sat at the gate of a wealthy man, hoping for some food, or assistance, whatever the man might be able to spare in his direction. But the rich man would not see him, and did nothing. Eventually, Jesus says, both men died, and Lazarus went to be with Abraham, the father of his people, in a place of blessedness and comfort, while the rich man was consigned to the torments of Hades.

It is important for us to be clear that Jesus is not telling this story to describe what heaven or hell is like, or what happens after death. Nor is this story saying that poor people will get their reward in heaven, and so they just need to be patient and wait to die.On one level, this parable is a cautionary tale, similar to “A Christmas Carol”, by Charles Dickens. The rich man, once in Hades, realizes his mistake and asks for relief; or barring that, at least mercy for his siblings who are still living, that they might learn from his example. In Dicken’s’ story, Scrooge goes through a life review, opens up his places of personal pain and hurt so that he is then capable of seeing the suffering of others, and comes to a place of repentence, and personal change and transformation. Certainly, Jesus wants each of us to hear that our actions and decisions in this life affect our spiritual condition, and the way we live faithfully on Christ’s behalf – or not.

But if we only understand “A Christmas Carol” as personal redemption, we will have missed Dickens’ point. He describes very clearly and directly the social evils of his day – their causes and consequences, the milieu in which Victorian England lived. It was a commentary on society as a whole. In the same way, Jesus uses this parable to address conditions among his own people in their own place and time. In what was largely a peasant society, begging in the street was an everyday occurrence.

But Jesus doesn’t just leave it there. In response to the Pharisees alluding to the Scriptural promises of God’s blessings of land and prosperity, Jesus wraps the story in such a way as to remind them that God’s Law also requires compassion and acts of mercy towards the poor and the suffering and the stranger. He puts these words in the mouth of the rich man and Abraham:“Father, I beg you to send [Lazarus] to my father's house— for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.” Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” He said, "No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” In other words, Jesus is saying, if you hold the Scriptures – the Law and the prophets – in such high esteem and you won’t take them seriously and live by what they say, they you will never be convinced by something outside of them that God does.

Woah! I don’t know about you, but I am always brought up short by Luke’s very sharp drawing of what Jesus has to say. So what do we do with this story in our own context, we who seek to be faithful followers of Jesus? I can give you one example, at least.

This past Wednesday morning, about a dozen volunteers from All Saints’ went to Shop-Rite in Stirling to bag groceries as part of Shop-Rite’s Partners in Caring program. Because Shop-Rite supports our food pantry by putting funds on our account at the Community Food Bank, they invited us to come and help them publicize their efforts to alleviate hunger and food insecurity during Hunger Awareness month. Our volunteers had some really interesting experiences: people who didn’t want help, people who were grateful for the help; some who gave very generously to the collection cans – twice, some who asked how there could possibly be hungry people in America when the use of food stamps in our country is so high – and didn’t really want to hear answer. That’s a very good question, and it has multiple, complex answers.

But we have to start by asking questions right here in our own communities, and being open – maybe even surprised or shocked – by the answers that come. Here is something I have learned in the last six months. There are at least 25 families in the Long Hill Township school system who qualify for the federal free or reduced lunch program. However, those children only get free milk, because our schools don’t have cafeterias and don’t serve lunch. So even though those families qualify for that benefit, there is no lunch to be had, adding to the daily challenge these families have to feed, clothe, educate and raise their children.

Why are they in this situation in the first place? I’m sure there are many, many reasons – a divorce, a death, an illness, a job loss, a legal difficulty, an unexpected pregnancy – each reason as individual as the family. And these are just the folks who have kids in the school system and who have filled out the paperwork. There surely are others.

We are doing what we can to connect with these families, but it is not easy. There is a lot of shame connected to poverty and hunger, people in communities like ours don’t want to come forward and ask for help, they don’t want others to know that they are struggling. They don’t want their children to have the stigma of financial difficulty.

So what can we do, as Jesus’ followers, as God’s People led by the Holy Spirit? We can ask questions, we can educate ourselves about the facts of hunger, homelessness, and poverty. The website of Feeding America is a good place to start. We can read the Gospels deeply and meditatively, open to what Jesus has to say. And we can pray, and ask God to lead us in wisdom and compassion for this world he has made, and then act – in ways small or large, as the Spirit leads us.

Let us pray.Lord Christ, you call us from death into life in so many ways – spiritual and temporal. Give us the strength and courage to follow you in being life-givers to those who share this world with us. We ask this in your name. Amen.

Jesus said: No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth." Luke 16:13

Do any of you find this Gospel reading confusing? If you do, you are in good company! It almost seems like Jesus is commending dishonesty and sharp business practice. And yet there’s that last bit about not being able to have two masters, about not serving God and wealth. What are we to make of all this?

Part of the difficulty is that Jesus is using two different forms of speech here. The biggest part of the passage is a parable about a wealthy employer and his manager, his steward. The last part of the passage is some direct teaching, some comments about faithfulness, loyalty, and about money. So you think the passage is going along in one direction, and then Jesus changes is up on you!

So let’s think about the parable for a moment. A wealthy man has a manager who is in charge of his estate – real and financial. The manager has been siphoning off funds, embezzling – and he eventually gets caught. But before he actually gets fired he cuts a deal with some of the master’s debtors, reducing their bills. He does this, of course, to curry favor with these debtors, maybe grease his way into a new job after he is let go. But there is another side to it, as well, and to understand it you need to know a little bit about first century Jewish Law.

The Law (which governed all aspects of life – spiritual and civic) forbade the charging of any interest on loans; it’s what was called usury. Now that didn’t mean it didn’t happen, and one way of hiding those interest charges from the public eye was to ask for payment in grain or olive oil, rather than cash. It was harder to track, and easier to pay because grain and olive oil were plenteous commodities. So most likely the deal the manager struck with the debtors was that he was erasing the interest from their payments. Imagine if you could remove the interest from your mortgage or your credit card bill or your car payment; that would be a huge help!

And when the employer found out what the manager had done, he applauded him; said (in effect) “I’ve got to hand it to you – that was a really shrewd deal.” He said this because the manager was building up good will with the debtors who might be able to help him network to a new job, and doing it at the master’s expense, while simultaneously tying his hands. Because if it all came out, the employer’s own law-breaking, his usury, would be exposed. So here we have embezzlement, cooking the books, and a form of blackmail. And the master praised the steward. That doesn’t mean that Jesus was commending any of what just happened. But what he was commending was the manager’s ability to think on his feet, to be shrewd about his situation and the world around him, quick to size things up and take action. Sometimes the “children of light” don’t cope as well with the crises of the world and do the “children of this age,” Jesus says. To his hearers, this would have meant the Jews who were struggling with Roman occupation and bitter contest for political and military control over their own destiny. He’s telling them that they need to wise up, pay attention to the real situation, and be prepared to act quickly and shrewdly in the face of mounting tension and danger. Of course we know that forty years later, the Roman army razed the city of Jerusalem and the Temple as a final act of power and control over the Jews.

And that’s not all jut ancient history. There’s something in that for us, as well. As Christians we do not serve God and ourselves and the world well if we retreat into a pleasant place of sitting quietly until all the problems and crises of the world go by, trusting that God will work everything out. Of course, God does have his arms around everything, and all shall be well, to quote Julian of Norwich, in the long run. But that run can be very long, with a lot of damage and difficulty in the course of it; and part of our work for the Kingdom of God is to do all we can, with God’s help, in the here and now to be God’s agents of light, peace, justice, goodness, truth, and love – but we have to be wise, have our wits about us, not be caught off-guard by the ways of the world, nor become immune to them.

At the end of the passage Jesus does have some direct things to say about our relationship with money – about honesty and faithfulness in the small things, as well as the big things; and about serving only one master: God or wealth; the old-fashioned word was mammon – the greedy pursuit of wealth at all costs.

Maybe this seems like an awkward time to be hearing and thinking about this passage, on this Sunday when we are set to announce the results of yesterday’s Rummage Sale, but let’s think about the Sale (and everything that leads up to it) for a moment. To start with, Kimberly’s first rule of rummage is: “No one gets hurt.” Our concern is always for everyone’s physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. Then, we know well that the Rummage Sale is an event that provides a welcome and a service to our neighbors and visitors, as well as being an agent of community building for ourselves. Having a party on our front lawn every September to which everyone is invited – whether they buy or not – is part of who we are as God’s people. In fact, yesterday some of our guests were from a group home for developmentally disabled adults here in town. Stopping by the Sale was part of their outing for the day. They seemed to enjoy looking at all the rummage, talking with some parishioners, and I know they enjoyed the coffee at the bake sale table! One of the residents had to be firmly steered away by his supervisor. She said,” He’ll stand here and drink your coffee all day, if you let him!” Finally, the funds that we raise at the Sale are for the mission of the parish – the work God calls us to do and be: as a place of worship, prayer, community, service to others, a place to refuel before you go out into your work week - doing God’s work wherever you are; being a place of fellowship and joy.

This morning we have a baptism: Quinn Beyer will be baptized shortly; and in baptism we are always reminded who is the Master, our Master, the One we follow, and trust, and try to emulate: Jesus. There is a question in the baptismal liturgy, one of the affirmations that Quinn’s parents and godparents will make on her behalf, and which was said either by or for each one of us: “Do you promise to follow and obey [Jesus] as your Lord?” and the answer is “I do.” That means that our ethical choices, our behavior, our work, the way we conduct ourselves in business and friendship, and family, as parents and neighbors all should be a reflection of Jesus – his words, his work, and his life: “Love God; love your neighbor as yourself.” That is what the baptized life is about, following Jesus as Lord and Master; becoming his apprentices; committing ourselves anew each day to serving the Lord as best as we are able, with God’s help.

“Do you promise to follow and obey [Jesus] as your Lord?” and all God’s children say: “I do.” Amen.Victoria Geer McGrath

Jesus said: What woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, "Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” Luke 15:8-9

Fifteen years ago tomorrow, on September 12th I sat down with my clergy colleagues, as we did every Wednesday morning, to pray together, to read over the lessons for the coming Sunday, to share insights about the Scriptures, and ideas about preaching. But of course, this Wednesday was different: we were all still in shock over the attacks the day before; we all had friends, neighbors, parishioners who had not returned home and whose death was presumed. Because we were in Bergen county we were able to hear the fighter planes that patrolled the airspace over the George Washington Bridge – so eerie in the otherwise empty skies.

We wondered how in God’s Name – literally – could we get up on Sunday and preach. What in the world would we say? And then we looked at the lessons, the very same ones in front of us this morning, and I was stunned by the passage from Jeremiah. It seemed as though the prophet was describing the scene in lower Manhattan: “I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins.” It was as though God was speaking to us directly about what had happened, about the destruction, about that suspension of reality that we were living through and continued to live through in the days and weeks following.

In those weeks so many searched and hoped for news of friends and loved ones. In those weeks we wondered when and if New York would be able to pick up the pieces. In those weeks, we took stock of ourselves and our society and wondered what had been lost, and we struggled valiantly not to be overcome by fear, by hatred, by an aversion to the stranger and the other – because that would mean the terrorists had won, and evil had triumphed. Do not be overcome by evil, St. Paul writes, but overcome evil with good (Romans 12:25).

So here we are, fifteen years later, with those same passages from Jeremiah and from Luke: the Parable of the Lost Sheep, and the Parable of the Lost Coin. Whether we are remembering what happened on 9/11, or thinking about some other anguish elsewhere in the world – Syria being the most prominent recent example – or we have in mind some personal situation that threatens to undo us – Jeremiah captures the sense of destruction and desolation, the loss of hope and purpose and reason.

And then we put the Gospel reading alongside Jeremiah. The two parables are word paintings, pictures, stories Jesus tells about what God is like. God is like a shepherd who goes searching for that one sheep who has wandered away and become lost, gotten into trouble, hanging by a thread. He risks leaving all the rest of the sheep to go after this one – not because it is special, or more beloved, but just because that is the way God is. God is the Shepherd who searches for the lost, who knows the flock – the People of God, the Beloved Community – will not be whole without all the sheep.

God is also like a woman, Jesus says, who has ten coins; maybe they are her life savings, her nest egg, her dowry. One goes missing. She searches relentlessly – spending precious resources to light an oil lamp in the daytime, sweeping every nook and cranny – until she finds the lost coin. And then she calls her neighbors together for a party, to celebrate with her, so that they could share in her joy and relief. That which was lost has been found.

That is what God is like: searching relentlessly, unstintingly, pursuing us, seeking us when we are lost and out of touch, and cut off from love and wisdom and goodness. And God rejoices and throws a party; all the saints and angels in heaven are invited – God doesn’t want to have this party alone! What had been lost has now been found, and is safe in God’s keeping.

You might think that if we have been lost spiritually, morally, in terms of human decency and relationships, that when we are found by God, when we come to our senses and turn around (the real meaning of repentence) that we’d just try to slink back home, tail between our legs, hoping that God and everyone else wouldn’t notice too much, or at least not say anything. The very next section in Luke chapter 15 is the Parable of the Prodigal Son – and that’s exactly what he tries to do – but God (the father in that parable) will have none of it. There is a party, a celebration.

The people in Twelve Step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous know something about being lost…and being found. And they know how to celebrate! The anniversary of a person’s sobriety is celebrated by the group at thirty days, at ninety days, at six months, at nine months, at a year, at eighteen months, and every year after that, because they know the difference between being lost and being found - all the difference in the world.

We all have ways that we get lost – in greed, in willful ignorance, in fear, in rigidity, in manipulating others, in dishonesties large or small, in shutting down our feelings, in viewing life through a lens of criticism and judgementalism, in loneliness or pain or grief. And in our lostness, God does come and search for us – tirelessly, relentlessly, sometimes camping out on our door step just waiting for us to open the door a crack, and let the light of his love seep in.

On this fifteenth anniversary of September 11, there are still many scars; there are wounds that may never fully heal; there are new tragedies and terrors that continue to take place in our personal lives and throughout the world; there is always the temptation to give into hatred, fear, and revenge. But there is also this: God loves us like that shepherd searching for the lost sheep. God loves us like that woman who searched for her lost coin. And we are here – able to find and be found by God – today, and every day, and for all eternity. That is worth celebrating, indeed.

God is good/All the time; all the time/God is good.God is good/All the time; all the time/God is good.God is good/All the time; all the time/God is good. Amen.

Jesus said: Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26-27

This summer I’ve been going to an exercise class at the YMCA that combines cardio and strength training; I’ve tried to go twice a week – three time when I can. I’ve enjoyed the class, and I can tell that it’s been helpful in getting more fit. But it’s meant a time commitment, even though a small one. I’ve had to keep an eye on my schedule.

Now a friend who is a fitness coach has invited me to be part of an on-line challenge group that she is hosting, and I have signed up. So for three weeks, starting tomorrow, I’ll be doing a thirty-minute work-out video every day, planning out my meals, and checking in with my coach and the challenge group. For me, that means I’ll need to get up about forty-five minutes earlier most mornings to get these work outs in. It seems a little daunting, I have to say, but I know it will be a good step to becoming more fit and staying healthy, which is a good priority.

Our Gospel reading this morning is all about priorities, and Luke puts it in the most stringent language – as he often does. In fact, Jesus says: Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple (NRSV). Yikes! Harsh words. Another translation puts it slightly differently, but still worded strongly: Anyone who comes to me but refuses to let go of father, mother, spouse, children, brothers, sisters—yes, even one’s own self!—can’t be my disciple. Anyone who won’t shoulder his own cross and follow behind me can’t be my disciple (TM). How are we to understand this? How does it apply to us as we follow Jesus in our own lives?

When we decide to make something a priority, that means we give it importance, a weighty matter for us, we carve out time and energy for it. That doesn’t mean we always succeed, but it means we keep it in focus, keep coming back to it, we don’t let other things crowd out our priority and choke it off. Certainly that is true with fitness. If you’ve ever had a health scare, and your doctor has said that you need to make changes in your habits and physical well-being, you know you need to do it, or be prepared to pay the health consequences. Similarly, if you have learned to play an instrument well, you have discovered that you can’t just sit down a play a piece with beauty and confidence on the first try – even if you already read music. It takes many hours of playing scales, and agility exercises, and technique practice, as well as learning the piece itself so that it begins to inhabit your body and soul. You’ve made your music practice a priority.

The same is true with faith, with following Jesus, being a disciple, living the baptized life. Faith is a priority, and Jesus is asking us to make it THE priority, the foundation and cornerstone on which everything else is built. Our relationship with God and the practical day-to-day living of it is what being a Christian is all about. It’s so easy – once we’ve started – to get distracted, tired, discouraged, overwhelmed, wander away. How many of you know that construction site in the Meadowlands called the American Dream? It is intended to be a mall and entertainment center. But it has been under construction for thirteen years. The ownership keeps changing, funding for the project keeps running out, and meanwhile the shell of the complex just sits there, rusting in full view of the Turnpike. Well, sometimes our spiritual lives can be like that construction project: we get started, but then something else comes along that absorbs our loyalty, we stop putting time and effort into it, we limp along on a few memes we come across on Facebook or half-remembered Sunday School lessons from childhood, and our relationship with God stalls out.

In the last twenty years or so the word “spirituality” has come into common use. At its best, the word tries to embody the way we experience God, as opposed to a dry knowing about God. Spirituality has always been a part of the Biblical and Christian record – that’s why the Psalms speak so deeply to us, and why various Christian writers describe different approaches to prayer, and worship, and Scripture reading. Some approaches hit home and resonate with some people and not with others. But in recent years, the word “spirituality” has sometimes become disconnected from anything larger than me, myself, and I; and we fall into the trap of thinking that God is there only to make us feel better, to get us through the rough times, to attend to our own personal wants and needs and those of our families.

That’s part of what Jesus’s hyperbolic words about “hating” family members and even our own lives is about. God does not want us to hate anyone or any part of his creation. Our families are one of God’s gifts to us, our life is God’s gift to us. But we musn’t mistake the gift for the Giver. We can’t put anything in God’s place of ultimate priority and loyalty – not even or families, as difficult as that may seem. There always has to be a place in our heart, and mind, and energy, and schedule for God and God’s concerns – some time for learning and growth, for prayer, for worship, for loving service.

But there’s another aspect to being a disciple that Jesus touches on here, which we could spend a great deal of time on, and which is important not to lose sight of. When Jesus speaks of carrying the Cross and following him, he is not speaking about the burdens and difficulties that naturally come in any life. We need to remember that in the first century, crucifixion was a form of torturous punishment by the Roman empire for crimes against the authority of the state, including law and order. In order to increase his public shame and humiliation, the prisoner was made to carry the wooden horizontal cross-bar through the streets to the place of crucifixion and ultimate death. Jesus’ hearers would have witnessed these kinds of executions, and known what they were about – an attempt to coerce and threaten the public into submission, as in: ‘if you don’t want to suffer the same fate, you will be sure to follow our rules.’

So Jesus holding up this image of disciples carrying the cross is putting those who would follow him on notice. There will be times, Jesus is saying, when my priorities and values and those of the Kingdom of God will come into conflict with those of the surrounding culture and the political authorities, and you need to be prepared for that. Not just prepared to follow a different way of life, but to know that there may be real-world consequences to your faith and discipleship. It might mean needing to break off a friendship, it might mean taking a public stand for justice and being ready to accept the consequences, it might mean feeling led to follow a course of action that is potentially dangerous because it threatens malign powers-that-be. The German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was part of the WWII resistance movement, and the Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Daniels, who was a white civil rights volunteer working to register black voters in Mississippi after the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, were both killed because of their work on Christ’s behalf. Jesus’ words are a reminder that following him will not make us safe and secure, as much as we would like that to be the case.

But following Jesus will lead us to truth, to love, to partnership with God, to greater meaning and purpose in life, to strength, and wholeness, and joy. And that is worth our time and attention and effort each and every day.

Let us pray.Day by day, dear Lord, three things we pray: to see thee more clearly, to love thee more dearly, to follow thee more nearly, day by day. Amen.

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Luke 10:30

The Parable of the Good Samaritan….probably one of the most well-known stories that Jesus told – at least in title, if not in detail. In fact, we even have a law that is referred to as “the Good Samaritan law”, meaning that if you, as a passerby, come upon the scene of an accident and stop to help an injured person, can’t be held legally liable for getting involved. But as it can so often happen, our very familiarity with this passage can cause us to glaze over it, skim the surface, and not stop to look and listen to God at work in and through this story. In fact, given all the events of this past week in our national life, I believe this story has a great deal to say to us.There are a few details that will help to get the full impact of the story the people in the crowd knew right away, but that we may not remember or realize.

First, Jesus tells this story about who really is our neighbor, by way of engaging the trick question posed by a religion scholar “And just how would you define neighbor?”; and he answers the questions from God’s point of view about who it is that we should love as ourselves.

Second, the priest and the Levite had specific religious roles at the Temple in Jerusalem; they had to be ritually clean to perform their duties – touching a dead body or getting mixed up with human blood would have rendered them ritually unclean. Giving the half-dead man by the side of the road wide berth was the prudent choice, if they were to show up at the Temple ready to do their jobs.

Third, Samaria was a region in what is now modern Israel, in between Galilee in the north, and Jerusalem and Judea in the south. For many historical and religious reasons, people from Samaria were considered less-than, not good enough, beyond the pale, deficient in their understanding of faithful living by religiously observant Jews. There was hostility and enmity between these two groups of people who shared so much history. That’s often the way it is between people who share a lot of history, isn’t it? It’s the folks you are closest to with whom you often have the worst fights.

Samaritans were truly “The Other” to faithful Jews, who would avoid traveling through Samaria as they went back and forth between Judea and Galilee, and go out of their way and take the longer route through the Jordan River valley so they didn’t have to cross through the region. So to his first century audience, making the man from Samaria the one who fully embodied and lived out the abundant love and grace of God was shocking, perhaps even disorienting.

Well, we have lived though some shocking and disorienting events this past week with the news of the deaths of two African-American men by police officers for what started as a minor traffic violation or community life question; and then the deadly ambush of Dallas police officers by an African-American man as the officers were patrolling and protecting a peaceful protest about those very shootings. And actually, the protest was incredibly peaceful and calm. In recent years the Dallas police force has worked very hard to improve their policing among African-Americans, by working on their own attitudes and impulses. In fact, the protest was just ending, and the marchers and officers were taking selfies together, celebrating how well the march had gone, when shots rang out.And all of this was magnified for the general public by the immediacy of video – some of it live streamed. What we saw in a very dramatic way is the painful reality that exists every day: that police officers feel vulnerable and at risk and far too exposed as they serve in communities of color; and that African-Americans (young men especially) and often Latinos, feel vulnerable and at risk as they go about their ordinary daily lives. Both these groups share a fear and vulnerability and a risk of violence that is long-standing, and that is (on one level) an expression and a flash point for the fear of The Other that is a theme in our society. That theme ebbs and flows, but in recent years it has been building to a crescendo again, perhaps taking many of us off-guard with the strength and passion of the anger, and hatred, and violence of word and deed that seems to be filling up so much of our psychic and emotional space. Has anyone been surprised by this swell of anger and hate? Has anyone not been surprised by it?

But it’s not new. Human sin is not new. Hatred and violence that are spawned by fear and a sense of vulnerability is not new. Our desire to turn away from pain and difficulty and risk is not new. What is new is our capacity to act out that fear and anger with deadly force more quickly and effectively than ever before.

So what do we do? What does Jesus ask of us? What is the Holy Spirit inviting us into?

To begin with, we need to look inside ourselves and find those places where we are afraid of The Other; our places of anger and grief for our lives and our world that may lurk in the shadows, but are powerful and painful. And as we look at that fear within ourselves, be aware that it is held and loved by God – held and loved enough for us to examine our fear, to ask questions about our anger and pain and not be afraid of what our feelings tell us; including not being afraid to talk about our experience of race and racism in an open and honest way. The author Brené Brown (University of Houston shame researcher, Christian, and Episcopalian) had this to say on Friday morning: “Instead of feeling hurt we act out our hurt. Rather than acknowledging our pain, we inflict it on others. Neither hate nor blame will lead to the justice and peace that we all want - it will only move us further apart. But we can't forget that hate and blame are seductive. Anger is easier than grief. Blame is easier than real accountability. When we choose instant relief in the form of rage, we're in many ways choosing permanent grief for the world.”

Once we know that the love of God really does encompass our deepest fears, we can remember that all people – all races, nationalities, ethnic groups, social groups, religious groups – all people are made in God’s image, all people are beloved of God, all people are our brother, our sister, at the most fundamental level possible. We are all one human family, for whom Jesus willingly went to the Cross, sacrificing his life for us. In Christ, there is no Other.

But God doesn’t want us to leave it there. We also have to act this reality, in our own interactions with our neighbors, our co-workers, the people with whom we come in contact every day. And we have to add our voices, our prayers, our influence, our actions to making decisions and attitudes, and legal and social standards that will bring greater justice, greater peace. Remember those questions in the Baptismal Covenant: Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? and Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? Our answer is (say it with me): I will, with God’s help. We will, with God’s help.

This is the question at hand, and the time is now, today, every day. Let us take our courage in both hands, knowing it will never be perfect. Let us know that God’s love holds even our deepest fears and vulnerabilities. Let us live the love and peace and justice of God with our brothers and sisters in God’s big human family of all colors and kinds, not overlooking differences, not being color-blind but in the differences seeing the glory of God. And let us live in trust and hope and work for the fulfillment of God’s purpose in the world.

Let us pray.Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,Source of all that is and that shall be,Father and Mother of us all,Loving God, in whom is heaven:The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.With the bread we need for today, feed us.In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.From trials too great to endure, spare us.From the grip of all that is evil, free us.For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and for ever. Amen ~ A Prayer Book for New ZealandVictoria Geer McGrathAll Saints’ Church, Millington, NJEighth Sunday after PentecostJuly 10, 2016

When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, "I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith." Luke 7:9

I want to start today by setting the scene, by getting clear about the backstory – on several levels.

To begin with, we have entered a new liturgical season: the Season after Pentecost, aka Ordinary Time, which gives the suggestion that this time of year – stretching all the way from now until Thanksgiving – is unremarkable, ordinary, not exciting, nothing much going on in the life of the Church, in the Scriptures, in our lives as Jesus’s followers. After the sequence of following Jesus’s life and ministry through Advent and Christmas, the Season after Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week and Easter, the Ascension, the gift of Spirit at Pentecost, and even the great mystery of the Trinity which we celebrated last week, things do seem ordinary; perhaps we need a bit of a breather. And yet this is also the season that focuses on the work of the Spirit in the life of the Church – and that means us: the Body of Christ, the People of God. This is the time of year that asks us how we are going to put what we know and have learned and loved about Christ into action. It’s as though our spiritual bones have been grown and stretched through living Jesus’ life with him; now our spiritual muscles have to catch up, they have to be worked and exercised if we are to have any strength of faith.

The second point of our backstory to get clear is that we are in Year C of the lectionary – the third year of our three-year cycle of readings. We started Year C back in Advent, and have been hearing from the Gospel of Luke for the most part, with readings from the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Testament that support the Gospel. Now we are moving into that time when the Old Testament readings will follow in course, telling large swathes of the story from one week to the next. In Year C those readings will all highlight the prophets and their ministries. It’s important to remember that in the Old Testament, prophets were messengers of God – not fortune-tellers, not clairvoyants, but people who had been called by God to steep themselves in prayers and the divine presence so they could listen for the word or message that God wanted to be spoken into particular situations. They usually addressed the leaders of God’s people so they could be guiding in making decisions that would keep the people as a whole in a faithful relationship with God, that would keep them in the covenant.

The backstory of today’s reading from 1 Kings is that Elijah was a prophet and wonder-worker from the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of King Ahab, in the 9th century BC. Earlier in time Israel and Judah (in the south) had been one united kingdom, under the leadership of David, and his Solomon; and it was during Solomon’s reign that the Temple had been built in Jerusalem, in the south, to be the home of the Ark of the Covenant, and the focus of worship for the whole nation. But the coalition and the dynasty of Solomon’s sons finally fell apart, and south and north each went their own ways. The Israelite kings pursued policies and alliances that ran counter to the ways and worship of Yahweh, Jehovah, the Lord God. King Ahab married Jezebel, a foreign princess and priestess of the Canaanite fertility god Baal and his consort Asherah. And he built many shrines to Baal, and put many priests of Baal on the court payroll – all in a nation that was supposed to have a faithful covenant relationship with God.

Elijah took the lead in opposing Ahab and Jezebel and in calling the people back to the worship of Yahweh alone, and there were a number of skirmishes in that long-running struggle. But finally, as we hear in the reading today, Elijah has called for a direct and public face-off with the priests of Baal. There were 450 of them, and only one of him. The idea was to see whose god is indeed listening to and answering prayer, and powerful enough to show up in the lives of the people.

Now, the story of this encounter is very long – thirty verses; that’s why we read as a dialogue this morning. And the lectionary editors suggest that we could omit verses 22-29, but that leaves out the Baal priests’ attempt to call down fire on their sacrifice – the whole point of the contest. And it would also leave out Elijah’s mocking of them – surely one of the snarkiest lines in the Old Testament: "Cry aloud! Surely he is a god; either he is ‘meditating’ (OT euphemism for being in the bathroom), or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened." Another reason for reading the whole passage is because life just takes time, faith takes time; as we tell our own stories of faith and our journey to know the Lord we know that it has ups and downs, ins and outs, and that our life of faith and relationship with God cannot be put in a 30-second container, like an ad for dish soap.

So the priests of Baal have failed to have their god respond in any way to their prayers. Elijah, on the other hand, shows his faith and trust in the Lord God first by suggesting the contest, and second by upping the ante by dousing the entire sacrifice and altar with water three times, just to make God’s response seem all the more dramatic. And that’s exactly what happens – Elijah prays, and God sends fire from heaven to consume the sacrifice, and all the people standing and watching are convinced and say “The Lord indeed is God.” Elijah to an enormous risk, went out on a huge limb, in order to call the people back to God through his very dramatic action. Had he failed, he would not just have been disgraced, and the people unconvinced, but Elijah would no doubt have been put to death by the king’s order.

In the Gospel we see a similar kind of risky faith. A Roman centurion, a Gentile, one of the despised military leaders of the occupying imperial force, sent a delegation of community leaders he had worked with to ask Jesus for help in healing a household slave who was ill. As they were talking, the centurion sent another messenger: “Master, you don’t have to go to all this trouble. I’m not that good a person, you know. I’d be embarrassed for you to come to my house, even embarrassed to come to you in person. Just give the order and my servant will get well. I’m a man under orders; I also give orders. I tell one soldier, ‘Go,’ and he goes; another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it” (The Message). The centurion had no guarantee that Jesus would entertain his request, that he would not be rejected out of hand. And perhaps he ran the risk, from the Roman point of view, of foolishly stooping to the local customs, being disloyal to the Roman imperial code. But he clearly knew from what he had heard about Jesus that here was power, and compassion, and his request was worth the risk on behalf of this slave whom he seemed to value. Indeed, the man was healed, and Jesus was very impressed with the centurion’s faith, so far than any of his own people.

And that’s one of the real hallmarks of faith – it is risky; the outcome is not assured by any means. It entails putting your hopes and plans, and sometimes even your life, on the line – trusting that God has your best interests at heart and wants you to be intimately involved with his purposes. Even when – or especially when – life seems to be falling apart, we are called to put our trust in God, to exercise risky faith; not foolish faith, but risky faith with no guarantee of the outcome except that we will always be held, loved, valued, and cherished by God. It was true for Elijah, it was true for the centurion, and it is true for you - now, today, tomorrow, next week, and on and on. God’s purposes for us and for this world are before us, and we are called to embrace and be embraced by the faith of Christ which will sustain us always.

Let us pray in these words from Henri Nouwen:“Dear God,I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?Please help me to gradually open my handsand to discover that I am not what I own,but what you want to give me.”― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Only Necessary Thing: Living a Prayerful Life

We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings. Romans 5:1b-3a

I enjoy reading mystery novels. They always have a way of engaging my mind, as well as my emotions, and while they are certainly recreational reading, they are usually more purposeful than a mere diversion. Because good mysteries, the classic ones – think Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, G.K. Chesterton, P.D. James – are not merely an intellectual puzzle to be solved, but they diver deep into the muck and mire of human nature. In fact, Miss Marple, one of Agatha Christie’s beloved sleuths, credits her ability to solve mysteries that seem to elude the local constabulary to her keen observation of life in her small English village. She has seen and known the follies, the failings, and the strengths of humanity “up close and personal” in her neighbors. And at the conclusion of these mysteries, the pieces do not generally fall into tidy categories wrapped up in neat packages. While the murderer is found out and usually bought to justice, there are often open questions, characters whose somewhat lesser sins and crimes slide out from under official notice, and those who sacrificially take on the sufferings of others.

In many ways, God is a mystery, and never more so than on Trinity Sunday, and when we contemplate the three-in-oneness of God. In some ways our language for each Person of the Trinity is direct, and personal. We speak of God the Father, like a loving parent, the Source of all goodness. We say God the Son, referring to God coming into human life, God “with skin on”, in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. And we speak of the Holy Spirit, closer than life and breath itself. All so familiar, direct – and yet we also know that it barely penetrates the depth of who God is, and how these Three Personas (hypostases in Greek) are woven together in an inner reality of love, mutuality, and inter-dependence. The mystery of God is not a wall to keep us out, but a labyrinth of love, drawing us deeper and deeper into the heart of God.

That labyrinth is a life-long journey which begins at baptism, as we are washed in water in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, as we join Christ’s death and resurrection to God’s New Life, a mystery of power and joy. Along the way we are nourished by Christ’s own Body and Blood in the Eucharist, the meal that draws us into Communion with God and with our fellow believers – the whole Body of Christ though out the world and history. Our life in God given shape by our reading of the Scriptures – our own personal daily devotions and our public reading and reflection in worship. And the mystery of God’s life in us is tried and tested, challenged, confirmed, and enlarged as we live the reality of our faith in the world – where we are often carried to places and situations that we could never have imagined or anticipated. And always, always the mystery of our life in God is undergirded by prayer, which weaves us into the fabric of God’s love and truth. No matter where we are, no matter what we are doing, no matter what time it is - work time, sleep time, church time, exercise time, house-work time, driving, child care, or going out time – it is all God’s time. As Christians we don’t have separate categories of our lives, we don’t put our faith in a box, it’s not confined to Sunday mornings and bed-time prayers. One of the mysteries of God is that life is whole, one, a unity – at least that’s how God sees it, and what it is at its best.

St. Paul describes it in the letter to the church at Rome: “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ the Messiah…and celebrate the hope of the glory of God. That’s not all. We also celebrate in our sufferings, because we know that sufferings produce patience, patience produces a well-formed character, and a character like that produces hope.” In other words, there is nothing that happens to us in life that is outside of God’s loving embrace and cannot be turned to God’s purposes. How is this so? It is part of the mystery that is God who is the creator and author of all life. And because all life belongs to God, our lives and our faith are to be outward-facing, encountering the other, God at work in one another, being vehicles of hope and healing and love. And we are called to work with God to repair the world, grounded in real people’s real concerns. We are to make sure that our hope and love has “skin on”; we are, after all, apprentices to Jesus the Master who is God Incarnate.

And the Spirit who is closer than life and breath? That sounds so quiet, so docile – yet just last week in the celebration of Pentecost we spoke of the Spirit coming like flames of fire, in speech that is strange and glorious, like a rushing mighty wind that blows where and how he will, without asking our permission! The Holy Spirit is powerful, and intimate; fiery, and like soothing ointment; sometimes a stiff gale, and yet constant and tender. When the wind of the Spirit is blowing, often all we can do is hoist our sails and go, if we are to go with God who sustains and inspires the world, a mystery both incomprehensible and inviting, “a deep but dazzling darkness” as the poet Henry Vaughan has said.

How do we, then, ordinary people, trying to follow Jesus, trying to do the best we can, connect with, and enter into the mystery of God the Three-in-One, the Holy Trinity? We do it best by prayer. Not a prayer that tries to describe or puzzle out or encompass every aspect of God or every bit of Trinitarian theology, but a prayer that is simple enough and roomy enough to hold us, and the world, in God’s embrace. And here is one such prayer:

Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth:Set up your kingdom in our midst.Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God:Have mercy on me, a sinner.Holy Spirit, breath of the living God:Renew me and all the world. Amen.~ N.T. Wright